


my good close friend

by kiiouex



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gansey's Saviour Complex, M/M, Ronan And Gansey's Terrible Co-Dependent Relationship, and frottage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 14:26:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9611414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex
Summary: You are in over your head. You’re going to keep going.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I started this sometime last year before I got tired for, uh, a few months. But terrible Ronsey is my absolute jam so here, I am reviving myself, pls enjoy
> 
> Huge thanks to the wonderful [telekinesiskid](http://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid) for beta reading and encouraging as usual, what a gem

You missed the fight, but you can piece it together from what you find. Drops of blood on the floor, too few to really worry you, maybe enough for a mouthful spat defiantly out; a dent on the wall, more blood, the echo of furious knuckles; a scuff on the door, kicked shut, vindictive and aching. And Monmouth empty, Ronan gone as soon as it wouldn’t look like he was following Declan.

You sit on the edge of your bed and eye the spatter on the floor. The walls still seem to hold the fight, boards too tense to creak, and the aftermath sits so sour around you. Idly, you guess at the catalyst; Ronan’s grades, Ronan’s attitudes, Matthew, their mother, their father, their _father_. Belatedly, you realise that Declan hadn’t seen Ronan’s new haircut – that would be it.

You imagine Declan’s voice ricocheting across the room, _are you trying to look like a thug? Pull yourself together Ronan, you’re not the first person in the world to ever be orphaned._ Declan is too good at saying ugly things in his elegant voice; Ronan is too good at rising to the bait.

Quietly, you suspect that Ronan just couldn’t handle seeing his father’s ghost every time he passed a mirror. He’s carving himself into something different with uncertain strokes of the knife, and it’s painful, bloody work. He’s becoming something Lynch-shaped when before he was just a Lynch, and ‘Lynch’ had always meant Niall long before it could mean anyone else.

Now that time has dulled the wound to only a ragged throb, Ronan needs something else to latch onto and you don’t know what. The shaved head, the tattoo, the ‘fuck you’ cut into the curl of his lips, none of it is spelling out a promising pattern. You want to give him space to grieve, and you don’t want to sound like Declan, and you keep finding yourself sitting up in the middle of the night wondering if you’re going to lose him. You’ve never had a friend like Ronan before, a spark, incandescent, and not quite fit to inhabit the muddy, miserable world that the rest of you all put up with.

It’s a long wait for him to come home. You know the right words to grant yourself patience – that the funeral was barely a month ago, that grief is different for everyone, and how would you feel if you lost your father? If you’d loved your father as much as Ronan had?

But still, you can’t help thinking of the funeral, and how you’d been the only person sitting in the same row as the bereaved. The requiem mass was too grand to feel familial, the sheer amount of ceremony daunting to an outsider like you, but there was still an undeniable kind of intimacy to being the only one any of the Lynch boys kept near.

Ronan hadn’t looked at you or said anything, and he had spent the whole service staring at his father’s casket with the kind of hollow-eyed intensity that made him look like he was grinding glass between his teeth. Matthew cried. Declan did an admirable job of performance grieving, speaking to everyone at the wake with his chin up and his voice calm and what your father would have called a stiff upper lip. You had to wonder how many of the mourners were just there for Niall, and how many the Lynch boys could recognise at all.

Ronan hadn’t gone to the grave, and he hadn’t wanted to go anywhere else, so you’d driven him nowhere until the sun set and night made Henrietta a different place, the kind of unfamiliar that didn’t have his father tucked into every corner, and a very small piece of Ronan could exhale. You took him back to Monmouth, because going past the freshly-raked gravel of Singer’s Falls was unthinkable, and you never discussed him staying but there was a part of you that guessed he was yours now, and a part of you that took a shameful kind of pride in it, that you could be useful to him in the worst week of his life.

When he finally comes home he smells like liquor, the kind you’re more used to smelling mixed with bile and weak groans of regret. Ronan does not look like regret though; he looks like a thunderstorm on his way to scourge some unfortunate land, even when all that means is trashing what little of his bedroom is still whole enough to be trashed. One month, and the room is still nearly bare - he hasn’t moved any of the old wonder in from the Barns, instead wrapping himself up in a new, hazard-bright coating. He is reinventing himself, and it’s so hard to watch when you loved what he used to be.

He doesn’t look at you as he crosses the room, and you don’t know if it’s intentional, that he stands on that spatter of Lynch blood, be it his or his brother’s, and you don’t know if it’s intentional, the way his foot twists, just a little, like he’s grinding it into the boards. The shape of his skull is a strange and ugly thing, and you don’t like the way it pulls attention to all the new hate burning in his eyes. You say, “Ronan,” but you get the tone wrong, too close to chiding, and he keeps walking, boots leaving filthy tracks in the grain of the floor.  

You have to get up and follow and try again, catching the door to his room as he swings it shut behind himself, too kinetic to stay in place and slam it. “Ronan,” you try again, and stop stupidly because the only questions you want to ask are trite. There’s nothing you can say that will better his mood, and all you really want is for him to actually look you in the eye with something other than misanthropic loathing.

He doesn’t look at you. He stands ankle-deep among all his new possessions – beer bottles, speeding tickets, bloodied gauze that you applied and he ripped off and that now poses a biohazard risk – and he tilts his head, just a little, to show that he’s listening. That’s all you get; that’s more than anyone else is getting.

You think that this is your chance to say _this is too much_. This is your chance to back out of a volatile problem that you never asked for, and you know Ronan is ready to hurtle off like a meteor. He’ll go and make a crater on his own, somewhere far enough away that you won’t feel the impact.

You say, “I’m not sure how well our current arrangement is working.”

Now he turns, and you can see the bruise on his jawbone starting to swell, you can see his teeth grit together, and if he is on a knife’s edge, then every single serrated tooth is biting into you too. He says, “So?” and he’s going to make you sound it out, even though he already seems to know why you followed him to his room. Every tense inch of him is spoiling for a fight, is quivering with it, and he’ll take one with you despite everything – it’s probably the closest he could get to fighting himself.

For one awful, uncharitable moment, you think this should be Declan’s job. Declan, who is Ronan’s legal guardian – who is only one year older, who just lost a father, who is scraping together the same shitty pieces with only the illusion of more success than Ronan is having. Declan, who left the bruises on him in the first place.  

You swallow it all down. You imagine your mother proposing, with incredible, practiced softness, that this could be a good time to let Ronan go on his own path, and you know that if you want to be the kind of person that you can stand, then you can never let those words pass your lips.

You want to ask him to come to you, but you already know he won’t, not with a war still trembling on his knuckles, so you go to him, cross the threshold into his room while his eyes never leave yours. Ronan Lynch is a great and fearsome animal, and there’s a snarl curling his lips, there’s violence in his teeth, there’s agony in his eyes. Papers slip under your feet, parking tickets, speeding tickets, a copy of the order of services. Every inch of him is coiled too tight, grief manifest as skin aching for scars, and he tracks your hand as you reach out and stroke the back of his freshly shaved head.

The stubble on his skull is still new enough to bristle under your palm as you smooth a hand along it, and Ronan stills infinitely. He drops his gaze almost immediately, but you don’t stop touching him, feeling the odd prickling of his shorn skull against your hand. There is a part of you that always wanted to run your hands through his hair, but the hair was his father’s and now you have Ronan alone.

He exhales like something in his chest is breaking. You cup his cheek in your other hand, still stroking his head, and the shave is less ugly up close, looks better when it’s not the frame for a hard creased brow and all of Ronan’s anger liquefied and pooling in his eyes. He looks a little like he might cry, and you don’t know what you’d do if he did, and you don’t know what to do beyond just touching him. What you’ve got now isn’t working. Declan isn’t working. Ronan needs something, and you have spent a whole month with fear eating your heart, that you won’t be able to figure out what.

It seems a shockingly large burden to carry for a boy you’ve only known one summer, but you were the only other person in their row at the funeral. The part of you that perpetually burns thinks _what would you do, if you were the person you want to be?_ The skin of your palm feels too thin; Ronan is still shaking against it.

You stand like that for too long, his head in your hands, before you work up the nerve to speak. Monmouth can be a great and daunting place to break a silence in, with so much air to fill, but you try. “Fuck Declan,” you whisper.

Ronan wheezes out a laugh, the kind that burns the lungs on the way up, and tries to pull out of your hold. You let him get a little more upright, but you don’t let him go. “Fuck,” he starts, “Gansey,” and there’s something like apology in his tone, but you don’t think either of you are even close to having said what’s needed.

“I’m not going anywhere,” you say, and you mean it sincerely, even if you do like the regal weight of the words on your tongue. Ronan’s finally looking at you, open and vulnerable, and you have to swallow down a lump in your throat to keep talking. “You’re not going anywhere, if you don’t want to. I do care about you, Ronan.”

He looks away, throat working, but manages a rough ‘yeah’. You don’t think Ronan Lynch has it in him to apologise for all of this falling to you, and honestly, it’s a relief. Instead he looks at you, earnest in a way you haven’t seen in a month, and he says, “I didn’t want us like this.”

“Neither did I,” you say, trying to smile through it, though the words come out too raw with regret. One of your hands slips from his scalp to the back of his neck, and he tenses, breathes, sags into the touch. An inappropriate shiver runs through you at his reaction; you can’t resist trying more, and you smooth a thumb over the top of his spine, feel the shift of his muscles like he’s orienting himself around your hands on him. Something is beginning to fall into place for you, the trick for keeping Ronan on solid ground.

When you meet his gaze, his eyes are half-lidded, daring and eager, defiant on principle, and it’s enough to make your throat go dry. Still tentative, you tighten your grip on the back of his neck, just enough to make his eyes slide closed, his exhale heavy. Well, you think. _Well_. It’s not what you were expecting, but you want Ronan alive more than anything, and you’ll work with what you’ve got. 

 “Is this – is this what you need?” You ask him slowly, carefully, not quite convinced of the turn your evening has taken. His skin is so hot against yours, and the certainty is starting to throb painfully along in your chest, that you’d ruin yourself to save this boy. You’ll ruin this boy to save him, too.

He tilts his head, nose pressing against the soft skin of your wrist, and you wonder if he’s going to bite down. Worse, you wonder if you want him to. All he says is ‘yeah,’ the feel of his breath about as effective as his teeth would have been.

“Alright, Ronan,” you say, voice gravel-low as you swallow down the last of your misgivings. You should be more surprised at yourself, how easily you’re making this decision, anticipation simmering low in your stomach, but then you see the corner of Ronan’s mouth twitch as you say his name.

You are in over your head. You’re going to keep going.

You steer the two of you back a handful of steps, still locked together, feet slipping on all of Ronan’s detritus until the back of his knees finally hit the bed. He stays standing, tense, until you realise with an electric little jolt that he’s not going anywhere you’re not going, and push down on his shoulders. That’s all it takes to get him to drop, legs parting so you can stand between them, your hand still brushing the stubble at the base of his skull, and for a moment you can’t think for how much you want him.

He is no less charged than he was before, eyes dark and turbulent storm clouds, and you don’t think anyone has stared through you quite the way he is now. “Ronan,” you say, because it’s enough, and he tips his head back, gaze burning a hole in the ceiling, something significant to the way he’s showing you the long, pale line of his throat.

You stand over him, feeling unsettlingly like you are attempting to seduce a bomb. You haven’t had cause to notice how much more solid you are than him before, but that’s the effect of regular exercise and protein vs a diet driven by a teenage boy’s whims; his shoulders seem narrow under your palms, all of him lithe and deadly and brittle. You take hold of his lapels in one hand, feeling the leather creak under your fingers, slide your other hand under his chin, tilt his head to the angle you want it at, and bend in to kiss him.

He tastes like blood and smoke and greasy food, and you kiss him anyway, as greedy for him as he is for you. You’d always hoped he’d smell like hay, or wood smoke, something soft and pastoral, but instead he fills your nose with the tang of asphalt. You don’t pull away. You have wanted this for so long, and so differently, and you drag your fingers over the stubble on his scalp while every single piece of you is aching to fill the void in him. You think you’ve learned the tide of him now, can feel it in how he tugs at your lip with his teeth, like he’s daring you to stop him, how he thrums when you squeeze warningly on his shoulder.

Certainty; something unyielding to bend against. If that’s what he needs, that’s what you’ll be.

He has a hand wrapped around your wrist, and you were so caught up in the hot twist of your shared breath that you don’t notice until he’s gripping you hard enough it feels like your bones could crack under his thumb. He has lost so much already, and he wants to push you away while it’s easy, and he wants to drag you down with him and never let you go. Pain throbs along your arm, and he cranes up to snap at your neck, leaving the stinging little bursts you so often see him with. Too much, too fast, too hungry.

“Ronan,” you say, anticipating the shudder he’ll give for his name in your voice and trying not to shudder along with him. “Stop. Let go of my wrist.” Your chest is heaving, but you win the fight to keep your voice steady, and he pulls away, a bare fraction of an inch, like his teeth are still straining to sink into you.

You want to treat him gently, but if the sharp twinge he’s left on your throat is anything to judge by, he doesn’t want you gentle. You get your knees up on the bed, either side of his hips, and shove him down harder than you’d like to, until he’s flat on his back and pinned by your thighs. It’s terrifying, and exhilarating, following your adrenaline and your instincts. You hadn’t realised you had this kind of _want_ inside you outside of anything academic, but now you’re alight with it, breath short and every inch of your skin prickling to be touched. Ronan looks like he is having an _excellent_ time.

You kiss him again, in a terribly overenthusiastic clash, but he arcs up against you in perfect response. Between you, his hands fumble for the buckle of your belt, too fast again, and you knock his hands away until he gets the hint. You couldn’t say if he’s done this before, if he wants you particularly or if anyone would be fine right at this minute, but you’re not sure it’s particularly relevant. You suck on his bottom lip, taking as long as you like to taste him, and he _whines_ for you, the sound vibrating all the way down your spine. It’s partly the rawness of the need; it’s partly that it’s _Ronan Lynch,_ and you feel a little dizzy with arousal _._

You finally slide one of your hands down between your bodies, scratch his thighs with your blunt nails, marvelling at touching him, at the way he revels in being touched, that you might have finally figured out how to keep him. You can’t see what you’re doing, not unless you pull further back from Ronan’s mouth than you want to get, but you can _feel_ him, so hard through the thick fabric of his jeans as you try to remember how to work a zipper. When you finally get his cock in your hands he hisses out, “Gansey,” and nothing else as you stroke once up the length, feeling it twitch at your touch, burning against your palm and slick at the tip.

His hands finally settle on your shoulders, and his nails are as blunt as yours but somehow he is much better at scratching, even through your shirt; after very quick deliberation, you take a hand off him to scrabble your own belt open, because it’s that or ruin another pair of chinos. You’re trying to guess at what will work, based off instinct, whatever makes Ronan push up against you, and a handful of videos you sought out at four in the morning when curiosity got the better of you.

It’s an effort to mask your uncertainty, but you manage, and then the first brush of your cock against Ronan’s sends such a shiver through you that you can’t think of anything else. You don’t even know if it’s the contact as much as it’s the _idea_ of the contact, of getting to touch Ronan like this while he buries himself in the crook of your shoulder and leaves blistering hickeys on every inch of your skin that his mouth can reach.

At least your body knows what it wants enough to guide you; you find a rhythm naturally, fingers stretching to cover you both, squeezing down just a little because it makes Ronan moan, and then a little harder since it only makes him louder. He is a delicate piece of knot work, and you don’t just want to shift the stress around, you want to pull him all the way undone.

You’ve wanted this for months, and you thought he did too. You used to dream it would be in his room in the Barns, legs tangling together in the warmth of Ronan’s room while the world glittered outside, and you could fall asleep watching the stars over his shoulder. You’d expected it might be embarrassing, exhilarating, experimental, and that you’d both be _happy_ for it. You were not particularly expecting to lead.

Ronan’s hands fist in the fabric of your shirt, white-knuckled and scabbed over, and you have to hope that this is what he needs and not just another way for him to slowly shred himself apart from the inside. Your strokes are getting more erratic, and your breath is catching; you nudge his mouth off your neck to get another kiss, but it only lasts a second before you have to break off to breathe again.

Your mouth is half an inch away from his, and every time he exhales you get a second hand lungful of every intoxicant he’s spent his night taking in. His pupils are shot, and he’s so _vocal_ , falling apart for you in a way you’d never expect. He chants, “Gansey, Gansey, Gansey,” and your name has never sounded more beautiful than it does as his hoarse prayer. You have to think that this is good for him; back arced, hips bucking in time with your strokes, your shoulders peppered with crescent-moon marks, one for every moan he actually managed to hold back.

You’ve wanted this for months, and you wanted it so _differently_ , but you’ll work with what you’ve got.

He stills and tenses, and then he comes, alternating falling limp and clutching your shoulders like a drowning man as his orgasm trembles up and down his body and makes every single inch quiver. Your hand only catches part of it, the rest shooting onto his stomach, while his cock jerks so sensitive against your own. You keep stroking, his cum slick over your fingers and then all down your length, and just the thought of it flares arousal white-hot all through you. You come with a sigh and a groan tangled together at the back of your throat, and to your shame and shameful delight you spill out onto the mess on Ronan’s stomach. 

You stay like that for a moment, holding yourself over him, both of you radiating heat and ragged breathing, before you finally sit up on your haunches. You can’t resist looking him over, because if this never happens again you at least want to save the sight of Ronan Lynch, shirt pushed up and pants shoved down, your cum mixed with his and smeared over his abdomen. For his part, he’s mostly just panting, thoughts lost somewhere up in Monmouth’s rafters.

You let yourself out of his room to clean yourself up, splash cold water on your burning cheeks and stare at yourself in the bathroom mirror and try to see if you’re a different person at all. You appear to be the same, if more flushed and possibly more impulsive.

There’s beer in the fridge, so you take two and a box of tissues back into Ronan’s room. He hasn’t moved an inch since you left, so you throw the box at him and sit on an edge of the bed that you know won’t be sticky.

“Here is what’s going to happen,” you tell him. He scrubs at his midriff, eyeing you with a very cursory kind of attention. “You are going to keep living here. You are going to keep going to school. I am going to look after you, and in exchange, you are not going to incinerate yourself. You are going to survive this year if it kills us both.”

You think if you talk like the outcome is certain, like what you want is a foregone conclusion, then he might be able to believe you too. He takes too long to answer, says, “yeah”, like it’s just what you want to hear, but he knocks his shoulder against yours as he heads off to the bathroom, the way he did back when the two of you could still have fun.

You’ll ruin yourself to save this boy.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, I'd love to know what you thought! I'm going to try to finish off a whole bunch of other WIPs and things and not fall off the face of the planet again :^) I also [tumblr](http://kiiouex.tumblr.com/)


End file.
